I delve into the esoteric in this blog post, but the comparison must be made for those that know and follow or participate in these equally epic sports. When I was much younger, I was a motocross racer, and in days more recent I train a few equestrians. Despite the two very different cultures, the physical activity involved in these two sports are surprisingly similar. The test of core and adductor muscles, as well as all other muscles imaginable caused me to take pause and compare the two.

In motocross you are part of the suspension – you must flex and move with all of the terrain availed, as well as with the monster machine underneath you! My clients describe equestrian riding in much the same way. Your overall fitness must be at peak levels in both pursuits due to the full body involvement required. So what is the ultimate comparison?!

I suspect if you can do one, I bet you could do the other (with practice of course). If you ride motocross bikes and can handle whoop-de-doos, then I bet you could learn to gallop and jump with a horse and vice versa. See comparison below.

We here at JETT tell our clients to shoot for three to four days of cardio a week. The safest and easiest combination is two days on the elliptical at 55-65% of your maximal heart (fat burning and building you cardiovascular base) and two days spinning (interval training).

If you combine this with a sound diet and two days of weight-lifting (full body) you will be healthy.

Sometimes it’s hard to hit the mark, here are some tips.

Get a FitBit (shoot for a minimum of 10,000 steps a day).

Walk for half of your lunch hour.

If weather permits get off the bus a stop or two a head of your destination.

Only 8% of people keep their New Year’s resolutions. How can we change this?! This advice of course will be dealing with health and wellness.

First and foremost come up with your plan, what do you want to achieve and how will achieve it. Don’t make your fitness goals unrealistic, don’t keep you real self and your ideal self to far from each other.

If you want to exercise more:

Join a gym

Get a personal trainer

Invest in some exercise DVDs

Join a running club

Join a martial arts studio

Start taking spinning classes

Try Zoomba

If you want to lose weight:

Pick a diet that works for you – Paleo, South Beach, Bullet Proof diet etc. All diets work if you stick to them

Get an app on your phone to help track your meals and calories

Make an appointment with a nutritionist

Stop drinking alcohol or greatly reduce your drinks per week

Cut out the sugar…you’re sweet enough

I would also use your phone or calendar to schedule all of your exercise and nutrition goals, make it a part of your life. The built in reminders on your calendar will help greatly in keeping you honest.

This is the time of year that life can get very busy, with our own health and wellness potentially falling to the wayside. Make sure to take time for yourself and stay focused.

Hopefully you have had a year of physical success to look back on, and now it’s time to evaluate, reflect and start putting together your plan for next year. If this year was good, next year can be even better.

If this year has been one that has fallen short, fear not and start putting together a plan that works for you. Don’t put your real self and ideal self to far from each other. Choose a fitness plan that works for you.

True health and wellness is lifetime journey and it is never to late to start, and always a good idea to continue.

I will leave you with two thoughts for the new year:

Don’t exercise just to look good, do it for your health and wellness. We may not all be fitness models, but we can all be healthy and live longer.

If you are in the Washington Metropolitan Area, you know that we are having amazingly warm weather for November. However this will not last forever!!

Do you have your winter fitness plan ready to go?!?! I’ll tell you mine and you tell me yours!! For starters I am heading back to my martial arts school www.taiyimkungfu.com , and have increased my lifting – nothing like doing some bodybuilding split routines in the winter when you can’t show it off 🙂

I have also stared taking my cardio indoors, not today of course it’s currently 73 degrees. I don’t run quite as much these days due to some arthritis in my right big toe (old martial arts war wounds), so I have been fairly religions with the AMT elliptical.

This should carry me through the winter months, now the question remains – what will you do?

I am always looking for new workouts and ways to challenge my body physically. Last weekend I went to our local Renaissance Festival https://www.rennfest.com and I went in costume. My costume was basically leather body armor, leather greaves, and leather vambraces.

What it reminded me of was wearing a weight vest; I was actually sore the next day from tramping around all day with my “costume” on.

I got to thinking, what it must have been like to wear armor while in battle and how much energy the average night in shinning armor would spend to move and fight. I did a little research and I came across this study http://bit.ly/1KRglMc . Long story short the average knight burned upwards of 2.3 times more energy just to move. I was just wearing leather armor and I felt the effects, it must have been tough going and those knight in shinning armor must have been in great shape.

I am not suggesting that we all go out and get ourselves plate armor to enhance our workouts but I think I’ll break out my weight vest this week http://amzn.to/1OG0TZi and add it to some of my workouts.

This the best time of year to get out and run!! The cooler weather and lower humidity allow you to push hard, and run further.

This is the season, there are more races than you can shake a stick at stick at. I would suggest that you sing up for a race and go for it. Check out this website for a list of races http://www.active.com/running

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